Fabricated snack products prepared from dough comprising starch-based materials are well-known in the art. Potato based dough, and the snacks made therefrom are especially well known. These doughs are typically fried in oil or baked to form the snack chip. Consumers are, however, looking for snack products that contain healthful ingredients other than starch materials. Moreover, consumers have demanded better flavor and nutrition in snack chips. While all age groups eat snacks, children are heavy consumers of these products and it would be highly desirable if children could get more nutrition from a snack product that they enjoy eating. And even more desirable would be to produce a good tasting snack product without artificial flavors and preservatives. Even more preferred would be a snack product that can provide a full or half serving of fruit, vegetables, dairy or protein (as defined by the United States Center for Disease Control, Atlanta Ga.) in a serving, especially if the snack were low fat and had less than 125 calories.
For example, consumers like to have fruit and vegetable based snacks. Although fruit and vegetable snacks exist, many are freeze-dried or vacuum fried, resulting in a layered or foamy texture and many lack flavor. The foam structure usually consists of large and small cells randomly occurring in the structure. The fruit snacks are mainly in the form of fruit leathers, fruit brittles or bars which have high levels of sugar, undesirable texture and lack the natural flavor essence of the fruit. Snacks made from these processes tend to develop off flavors, either due to (a) processing (e.g., frying, drying, dehydrating, and other processing), (b) preservatives or pretreatment of ingredients (sulfur dioxide, bisulfite materials or organic acids such as ascorbic or citric acid) or (c) interactions between the chemicals present in the ingredients themselves. For example, the preservatives, or acids naturally present in fruit and vegetables can react with the sugars and amino acids naturally present and increase the browning reactions during cooking and other processing steps. Moreover, added preservatives are unacceptable in natural products and those that claim to be “preservative free”. For these reasons crisp fruit and vegetable snacks that retain their natural flavor have proven difficult to make in a consumer acceptable format.
Likewise, meats, cheeses, nuts, fish, whole grains, eggs, and other nutritional foods are equally desirable for use in snack foods, but they are also hard to formulate in a consumer acceptable snack product. The oil content as well as protein or fiber content present a challenge in formulation.
More specifically, the relatively high temperatures and/or long cooking times necessary to produce a crisp snack product degrade the flavor of these nutritional additives such as, fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese, fish and the like. The nutritional value of these materials is often degraded during the cooking process as well, particularly when high shear extrusion or steaming is used during processing. Thus, commercially available fabricated snacks contain low levels of these ingredients and rarely utilize the raw ingredients such as fresh fruit, vegetables, and the like and thus lack the “authentic flavor” and nutritional value of the main ingredient.
“Authentic flavor” as used herein refers to consumer recognition of the flavor as the flavor of the nutritional component, such as, apple, tomato, carrot, shrimp, tuna, or even combined flavors as salsa or pizza. For example, the flavor of a fabricated apple chip should taste like a fresh apple without the addition of artificial apple flavor. Likewise, a corn or shrimp based chip should taste like cooked corn or shrimp without the addition of artificial flavors.
There are many reasons for the degradation of the natural flavor and nutritional value in fabricated snack chips comprising fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, nuts, fish, whole grains, eggs, and the like. Many of these products are high in moisture, especially fresh fruit. But snack chips, even those made with fruit, must be low in moisture content to make them crisp and to maintain shelf stability without preservatives. While the water content of the dough can be controlled to some extent, the total moisture content of the snack product must be lowered. This dehydration is usually done by steaming, baking or frying. If the snack chip is to be fried in hot oil, as most are, the dough must be relatively low in moisture before frying to remain low in total fat content as well as to meet the desired caloric content.
The binder in a fabricated chip is typically a starch material that is pregelled or heated as part of the processing. For example, shrimp chips are very popular in many countries. The comminuted shrimp is typically mixed with a bland starch material, for example, rice, and then the dough is cooked at high temperatures to gelatinize the starch and cook the shrimp. This first step has a negative effect on the authenticity of the shrimp flavor and may degrade some of the nutrients as well. The dough is then dried into a “half-product” or intermediate product which is shelf stable. The method of drying can also be detrimental to the remaining flavor and nutrition of the product. Finally, some finishing processes such as frying, baking, microwaving or the like, to make a crisp snack product, also are detrimental to flavor and nutrition.
In the past, the addition of pieces of the nutritional food ingredients into a starch based dough, for example, pieces of fruit, vegetable, meat, cheese and the like, resulted in a product with burnt pieces of the additive and often off-flavors. These products did not taste good and sometimes had dark or burnt specks.
Hence, there exists a need for formulae, doughs and processes for making fabricated snack products with relatively high concentrations of non-starch ingredients, for example, fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, nuts, fish, whole grains, eggs, and the like, while maintaining certain textural and taste qualities that consumers prefer. And there is a need for a fruit containing snack product that is made from a sheet of dough or extruded, and then fried, partially fried and then baked, or baked that tastes good.
These and other advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following disclosure.